Walking

Good day. I walked across the millennium bridge outside Tate Modern. I walked across, turned around and walked straight back. I have been wanting to cross it since it opened five years ago. It was closed, I think for over a year, then I felt so lacking in confidence about my walking I never got round to it. If I was ever up on the South Bank I was usually cycling. Well the cycling has come to an end - perhaps for good - who has ever heard of a bi lateral leg amputee cycling - watch this space you never know - there is always a first time.

Any way it was great to walk. I have rediscovered walking, something I have not chosen to do, and something I have found increasingly difficult and painful to do for over twenty years and certainly over the last six years. Suddenly I am enjoying walking, choosing to walk rather than getting a lift. I've even been walking to church - must be a mile and a half, at least.

Any way what has this to do with writing. Loads!! Walking is a way of composing. Walking is active reflection, walking is a re-connection to the earth. Walking is re-connection to the world. Here is a line I posted to www.oneword.com Smudge was the word.

"We drove fast, the country dissolved to a smudge of shapes and colours beside us. "

This was my relationship to the world. A fleeting smudge of colour through the window of a car. What kind of poetry can that really produce? Mediocre at best. No. I hope and pray from now on that walking will become a rich and fundamental part of my life. A creative act - perhaps even feeding rhythm into the poems. Who knows. It may not be as easy as this.

Coming back we picked up the booklets from the printers. All two hundred. So now the tug of war begins with Katy over selling and giving them a way. I'll write no more about this subject again. They look great. The printers did a good job.

Enough!!